The customer journey does not begin with the last click before they visited your ecommerce site. No assumption could be more damaging than this one.

You need to take off that blindfold and clean your glasses if you’ve been ignoring this part of the journey.
Once you have got ahead, next you will need to crisscross this journey with the interactions with your competitors if you want to stay ahead for any length of time. And don’t forget all those potential customers who have been influenced by this on-line saga. A good way to view this problem is to envisage a funnel

For an interesting interactive tool that can be filtered by industry classification to get a glimpse of how last click relates to the other channels and influencers, check out the ink below

2. Its not what they say, or what they do, or even what they say compared to what they do, but it’s what they tell their friends that is interesting.

If you have spent any time working with professional market research you probably noticed that people tell you what think you want to hear, what they think makes them sound clever, or mostly what they believe the group will be impressed with.

It takes a great deal of skill to capture useful insight from market research and to make large investments on the basis of just a market research report, however good, is a fatally risky thing to do.
People invariably do entirely different things to what they expected they would do in a particular situation and even from what they planned to do. It can be very difficult to explain why you did this, you can read the underlying Social Psychology theories and decide whether to believe them, or not, but it wont change the facts at all.
People are more driven by their acceptance in, or leadership of groups than any other thing and hence, once they announce to the group what they are going to do, it is more likely that they will do it than not. Hence the most valuable insight into what someone will do is what they are wittering about in social media.
Be warned of course, just like other forms of research, this is one more voice to add to the conversation, not the single source of truth.
Just in case you are thinking it, most people ask this , there is a big difference between what people say in idle chatter to their friends and what they tell you in focus groups. The latter is not populated with their peers and it ends when they leave.

3. The journey does not end at purchase, or anywhere close to it.

If you have been following the series so far, you will remember that in paragraph 5 of the last section I presented some hypothesis about the power of referral from your customers. This is a very valid argument indeed for being switched on to the journey after purchase. In many sectors of course ,there is an ongoing relationship with the brand.

First of all the product may be one that is repeatedly used over time, each repeated use will therefore be another interaction with the brand and the quality of that interaction does count. Additionally there will be the difficult period when customers are learning to use your product and later there may be issues that require active support.

If you take the view that once they have purchased and you have their cash, there is little motivation to spend more money on them, then you are greatly mistaken, because even if they never plan to make another purchase of your product, they will talk to everyone they know and their influence will cost you dearly. Put together enough of these negative voices and it will put you out of business.

A far more constructive way of thinking is to ask yourself what up-sells, or cross-sells you might be able to introduce as a result of providing high quality personal support. If you don’t have other products, this may be the catalyst you needed to re-think your brand and product strategy

A user journey can be and usually is very complex, even when we only represent the main points. Even this however, is a potentially misleading picture. Thee are always Moments Of Truth when you win or lose on the tiniest of margins and these are the ones you must identify and focus your closest attention on.

For example: When the customer finally returns to your store feeling really happy with her decision, clicks buy and you don’t have her size in stock. That’s not a good situation.

When she clicks buy and gets a spinning thingy that goes on and on. Not good.

When she buys and although being a regular customer she is asked to enter a lot of information yet again despite being on a sunny bench with her HTC One and her longest nail extensions. You are really pushing your luck here.

It’s not all about clicking buy, it could be when she decides to see what people are saying about you and the first thing she finds is a blog by an irate customer of yours that you didn’t even bother to respond to let alone apologise for. The writing is on the wall.

These moments of truth may differ for different customer segments and personas, so you really need to know this and it may even differ at different times of day or seasons or with different devices.
For cheap flights customers I would say that, certainly for me it is “Paying the bill”,” Leaving on time”, “Arriving on time”. The other stuff in this case is far less important and if it can only be done at the cost of these three, I hope they just ignore it.

“Learn what the Moments of truth are for your customers and focus a lot of your attention on getting them right, it will make a huge impact on your top and bottom lines.”

According to Google, there’s a Zero Moment of Truth.

“that moment when you grab your laptop, mobile phone or some other wired device and start learning about a product or service you’re thinking about trying, or buying.”

When I talked previously about taking a hit to let customers realise how badly they want your product, this was ZMOT.
When Henry Ford gave them a smelly noisy Iron horse and changed their lives, that too was ZMOT. For you and I, winning at ZMOT means deeply understanding our customers habits and preferences so that we can be there at the moment when the inspirtaion hits them and showing the the right messages to take them to the next level in the journey.

1MOT

In bricks and mortar terminology, this is nothing more or less than “First Impressions”. Until Google gives you the time machine, you can’t go back and redo first impressions.
We spoke in the last instalment about how People see what they expect to see and feel what they expect to feel, well this is ground zero. Here is where you set that expectation and it had better be good.

2MOT

This is when they open that box and your shiny product falls on their toe and puts them in hospital, or they struggle with one point white print instructions on grey papaer in broken Korean. You may well have thier money in the bank right now, but dont fool yourself about the importance of getting this right.

3MOT

Is the remebered sensations of using your product and how they compare to the expectation. Wow that requires some thought.
Its not enough to have a great product, but it should be at least up to the expectation. Not only do they need to like the product, but they need to trust you to give them an even better one when your competitor moves the goal posts with a new offering, otherwise you’ll be saying an early farewell. Don’t forget that it is not just your product, but everything your business does in the public eye as well as how you answer your phones, or not and help them when they have a problem.

4MOT

This is when they talk about you to their friends and social media contacts. This is one you absolutely must win